Here are some things that I am trying to remember and do that I figured I would share:

Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Loving God means loving what God has created. As such...

Love your neighbor as yourself. Your neighbor is anyone that you come in contact with. Your neighbor can look like you. Your neighbor is another race, another nationality, another religion, another orientation. Your neighbor can agree with you or disagree with you. There is no hierarchy to your neighbors. You are called to love them all.

Listen to other people's stories. People in middle America say they feel like they have been forgotten by the "elites" on the coasts (which itself forgets that there are many non-elites on the coasts). That may well be true, but forgetting is a two way street. There is no part of America that is "Real America." Each person here is just as real an American as anyone else.

Rebellion has been on my mind a fair amount for several reasons. I think being a youth minister makes me try to prognosticate teenage rebellion and figure out how to crack those codes. The forthcoming presidential administration makes me ponder what ways the church might need to rebel. And a month of anticipatory waiting to see Rogue One then finally getting to see the movie put rebellion on the front burner. The Star Wars story is, after all, the story of the Rebellion.

Rogue One is an enjoyable film. It's one of those rare prequel/sequels that make the original movie an even richer story. There is also something viscerally thrilling about watching a ragtag group of rebels (led by a woman and group made up of an array of ethnicities plus a robot) undermine the Empire and deliver what turns out to be a fatal blow. Rogue One is a war movie, which means that stormtroopers are mowed down, Nazi-like Empire officers get their comeuppance, and bad guys get their just desserts. You get to see those who live by the blaster die by the blaster, the powerful reap what they have sown.

Every other Wednesday, I take my lunch break to drive about 15 minutes out of town to go to my local comic book shop (because as awesome as Nashville is in so many areas, it took me a month and a half to find a decent comic book shop). There's a spot where 440 goes over I-65 where you can catch an incredible view of the Nashville skyline. I remember driving back to work one Wednesday in December, catching that glimpse, and realizing that this was now my city.

I had lived and worked in Music City for about three months at that point, but in that moment at the end of the year I was taken aback by everything that had happened. None of this was on my radar for the majority of 2016. There are still times when I'm walking the halls at church and this surge of awe goes through me: "I get to work here!"

Another year has come and gone. A ridiculous amount of things have happened in the world and in my family's own little corner. To look back on the past year, here is my annual review of my most read and/or favorite posts from this past year. Thank you to everyone who has read, commented on this site, and shared posts on social media. Your encouragement means an awful lot. Here's a look back at 2016.

In the popular imagination, 2016 has gained sentience and transformed into some sort of raging beast. I don't think this year is out to get us, but it has been a difficult one for many people. Yet there has been good and I think it is important for us to share the bright spots in our lives with others. The arts are one of those areas in which the light most often gets through to me. The following is not any sort of "Best of" list. It is just some of the television, film, music, comics, and literature that have been bright spots for me in these last 12 months.

When I was a kid I wanted to be an astronaut, which is to say I was a kid. I memorized the name of all the space shuttles and had a picture of one in my room. I read books about the Apollo missions. I played with space-themed Legos. I had a blue VHS tape that was an infomercial from Space Camp. In my mind, there was nothing more awesome than to explore the frontier beyond this terrestrial ball we call home.

My interests eventually shifted, but the news of John Glenn's passing yesterday caused me to flashback to my childhood. Glenn served in World War II and Korea, he was a U.S. Senator, in 1962 he was the first American to orbit the Earth in the Friendship 7, and then three and a half decades later returned to space on the shuttle Discovery. That that sentence is about a single human being is ridiculously staggering.